As far back as I can remember, I have fond memories of camping trips. I'm not talking the home-away-from-home in a camper camping (because that doesn't count) but the family packed in one tent or sleeping under the stars in your sleeping bag kind of camping. (The Beale family is the only exception to this rule because they made their own awesome camper!) From my childhood, sticky, hot summers were spent in a tent near a beach or amusement park, taking us kids to exciting, new places. A couple emergency trips were taken to the family doctor because of mysterious rashes and severe poison ivy exposure in the woods but that's to be expected! It was our way of staying at fun destinations without having to stay in a hotel and we always had a blast. Now that we are all grown up, we still try to get away to a campground each summer as a family.

For the past eight years, Erik and I have continued with the camping fun by packing up spontaneously to get away. Our camping adventures have taken us to my favorite amusement park for the Halloween festivities, the Blue Ridge Mountains for hiking and to take advantage of the crisp, fall nights by a fire, the waves in the Outer Banks to escape the summer heat, white-water rafting in West Virginia, and the beaches of Hawaii where the wind was so wicked, I thought our tent would shred around us!

Luckily we love camping because our group here in Fiji camps 24/7! It may be a bit more luxurious than tent camping but on a daily basis we use candles, lanterns, cook by the light of our headlamps, use coolers, walk to the outside shower under the moon and the stars while dodging cane toads with each step, and when times are desperate, even use the bathroom outside….but I’ll get more into that during my communal living post I promise to write.

So if we are already “camping,” what does it look like when we actually intend to go camping? We go all out in our own special, off-the-grid way, especially when a birthday is involved. When you have a birthday with us, you get to choose what we do that day so our most recent camping trip we ventured to a neighboring island to celebrate Bob’s birthday! This island is a thrashing boat ride across our bay and has one village with only 200 inhabitants. You have to get permission ahead of time to even visit! So we did just that and brought our kava root to be prepared for a traditional ceremony with the chief.

We’ve done the camping thing a couple times and have learned a few lessons depending on the location. For one, we can’t get away from the sand. Ever. That includes when you’re cooking and eating so we’ve upgraded to bringing a cooler and a charcoal grill. That sounds standard for camping but remember this all gets packed into our already fishing-gear packed, 23 foot boat with the five of us jammed in it. At least we didn’t have to bring the firewood like we’ve had to before…. So here we are getting thrashed in our boat, everything and everyone getting soaked even while wearing full rain gear and swim goggles, then we realize as the tide is almost at its lowest, that we can’t get to the beach! Luckily we were intercepted by some village fishermen who guided us in. We met with the chief at his house but instead of a kava ceremony, we had fry bread and Ovaltine. Anyone remember that stuff? Then we lounged on the floor with seven Fijian men watching rugby until they fell asleep. Sounds a bit like football at a relative's house on Thanksgiving.

Once the tide was high enough, we made our exit with the blessing of the chief to pick our own spot! That means we had the entire island to choose where we wanted to set up camp. Being in our boat and the island having no roads, we stuck to the water to find the perfect beach location. We chose a deserted beach on the opposite side of the village that was gorgeous! From there we did a version of the normal camping stuff: collecting driftwood and palm leaves for firewood, setting up our tents in the sand, catching fish for dinner, crab hunting with Hawaiian slings in the mangroves, shell hunting on the beach, playing charades by the light of a campfire (Um please tell me how does one act out “Minestrone soup”??), watching the sunset and sunrise over the mountains, and just enjoy nature in its purest setting.

Previous camping trips have been to deserted beaches on our own island or on a small, sand island only visible during low tides. There is a serious trade off with these spots: the sand island is in the middle of the bay, meaning zero mosquitoes, versus the beach, where the mosquitoes are plentiful but you don’t have to worry about you and your gear going under water as the tide comes up. That’s when timing comes in and we have to arrive at the perfect low tide and scramble out of there before high tide! Plus, there is a crab invasion that happens at night on the sand island. We made the mistake of not taking a tent the first time and those crabs didn’t hesitate to climb all over us and our stuff all night!

So there you have it, we clearly love camping! But I understand camping is not for everyone and our kind of camping is for even fewer! But for us, it's an adventure, no two trips are the same, and ​we are making memories that will last us a lifetime.